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Gotta have faith in this art auction

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
02/09/2019 06:34:58 AM EST

LONDON (AP) -- A trove of art collected by singer George Michael before his death in 2016 is going up for auction in London.

Christie's is selling the star's collection, including pieces by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas -- members of the "Young British Artists" generation who, like Michael, shook up Britain's creative scene in the 1980s and '90s.

Christie's contemporary art expert, Cristian Albu, said Friday that the collection is "a portrait of Britain in the 1990s."

More than 200 works are on offer, including Hirst's "The Incomplete Truth," a glass case enclosing a dove preserved in formaldehyde, which has an estimated price of 1 million to 1.5 million pounds, or $1,280,000 to $1,920,000. The sale takes place March 14, with some lots being sold in an online auction running March 8-15.

Ex-Times editor admits sourcing error in new book

NEW YORK (AP) -- The former executive editor of The New York Times acknowledged Thursday that her new book, "Merchants of Truth," contains some sourcing errors and said she would correct them.

In an email Thursday to The Associated Press, Jill Abramson wrote that some page numbers in sourcing notes needed to be fixed and some sources "should have been cited as quotations in the text."

"The notes don't match up with the right pages in a few cases, and this was unintentional and will be promptly corrected. The language is too close in some cases and should have been cited as quotations in the text.

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This, too, will be fixed," she wrote.

A Twitter thread posted Wednesday by Vice correspondent Michael C. Moynihan listed several examples of passages in Abramson's book that closely resembled the work of other publications, including Time Out and The New Yorker.

"I wouldn't want even a misplaced comma so I will promptly fix these footnotes and quotations as I have corrected other material that Vice contested," Abramson wrote, noting that Vice had previously pointed out factual mistakes. "The book is over 500 pages. All of the ideas in the book are original, all the opinions are mine. The passages in question involve facts that should have been perfectly cited in my footnotes and weren't."

Abramson had defended herself by saying that her book includes extensive endnotes, including web links to sources. It is widely believed that an outside source should be credited in the body of the work if there is a close similarity.

Abramson's book, which is subtitled "The Business of News and the Fight for Facts," was published this week by Simon & Schuster. It is a critique of the media that focuses on two leading newspapers, the Times and The Washington Post, along with Vice and fellow digital company BuzzFeed.

The Rock says he was Oscars' 'first choice' to host

The Oscars almost got to smell what the Rock is cooking.

Entertainment Weekly reports Dwayne Johnson tweeted Wednesday that he was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' "first choice" to host the Oscars this year but "couldn't make it work" because he's busy working on a sequel to "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle."

Responding to a fan who threw out his name for the hosting job, Johnson wrote, "Ah mahalo dude, I was their first choice to host this year, and my goal was to make it the most fun and entertaining Oscars ever. We all tried hard, but couldn't make it work since I'm shooting Jumanji. Academy and I were super bummed but maybe one day down the road."

A rep for the Academy, which organizes the Oscars, did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment.

Kevin Hart, who co-starred with Johnson in "Welcome to the Jungle" (itself a sequel to 1995's "Jumanji"), was previously named as this year's Oscar host but stepped down after homophobic tweets he had written in the past resurfaced. Hart apologized for his previous comments in a tweet shortly after he dropped out, and again on his Sirius XM radio show, "Straight from The Hart."

Instead of finding a replacement, the Oscars will instead be without a host this year.

Kerry Burke, the new ABC Entertainment president, said Hart's high-profile departure has actually been a boon to the Oscars because it has kept the show "in the conversation."

"It's really compelling. People really care," she told reporters during the Winter Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif.

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